Barking Mad

The Devil is in the Details!

Keeping Meg's upcoming visit a complete and total secret from Gaby has been damned near impossible!  We're still working out the details but as of this point in time, here's the basic scenario.  Meg's flight arrives in Boston late Wednesday night.  I go, pick her up, and hide her until Thursday morning after Gaby has already left for school.  I bring Meg and Kennedy back to the house Thursday morning and Meg dresses in her Air Force ABU's and we head to the school at noon while Gaby is in a combined (there are two or three other classes with her when she takes gym) gym class, and where one of her gym teachers is a Air National Guard Sgt.    Meg will walk in and surprise Gaby.   It's a given that once that cat is out of the bag, there's no way Gaby will be able to spend the rest of the day at school.    I can guarantee she will not want to let her big sister or her niece, who she's meeting for the first time ever (as am I - but I'll have an 18 hour jump start on her!), out of her sight. 

As far as trying to keep Gaby in complete darkness about all of this plotting, scheming, and suprirsing,  we're finding that to be extrememly difficult!  Gareth and I (or is it "me"?  I think it's "me" but it sounds really off. Now is not the time for my ADD-riddled brain to go off on a tangent of "I" vs. "me") find ourselves saying something about her and Kennedy's (squeeeeeee! And my brand new lens came just in time!) trip back home to the states, IN FRONT OF GABY, and stopping mid-sentence and having to make something up, pull something out of thin air before we let the proverbial cat out of the bag! 

For instance, Gareth was standing in the kitchen drying dishes and I was sitting on the sofa folding freshly laundered clothing and I said, "It's going to be a miracle if I can get all this laundry done before The Queen of England and that gorgeous itty bitty cutie pie come to stay with us."

Gaby, who was sitting at the coffee table doing lines writing "I will not talk back to mommy and daddy." 25 times, piped up and said, "The QUEEN OF ENGLAND IS COMING TO VISIT US? Daddy, that's your Queen of England?  She's gonna be in OUR house?  HERE?  To see US?  And our cats?"

That's pretty much how some of our conversations have been going lately.   Another, potentially amusing "for instance" goes something like this:

"Gareth, I'm running out to the store to pick up some diapers, baby formula and organic baby food.  Be back in a few!"  Meg's flight gets in pretty late on Wednesday night and I don't want to have to stop so she can pick those things up, on the way home.    Having them on hand will hopefully make things easier on her.

Of course, the small child known as Gaby comes running to the door as I'm about to leave and exclaims, "Diapers!  Baby food! Why are you getting those?   Who are they for?"  

I looked at her, picked my jaw up off of the floor and said, "Well you know, I might be asked to babysit and it would be a good idea to have those things on hand just in case."   

Gaby's fairly intelligent and she continues her inquisition, "Mommy, who has a baby that you're going to babysit?  There are no babies around here!"   

I thought about it for a moment, and thankfully remembered that there is in fact a 6-month old who is the little sister of someone that Gaby cheers with.   I grinned at Gaby and said, "You never know when Miss Cassandra might need to run an errand and ask me to watch Eva for her.  So, I'll have this stuff on hand in case!"   

Gaby's little brain immediately went into overdrive and she took things a step further.  She started jumping up and down and in a singsong voice exclaimed,  "Yayyyy that means Kiera Kiera Kiera is gonna come over for a playdate playdate playdate and we're going to demolish my bedroom play with Barbies and Legos in my bedroom and dance and practice our routines routines routines!"  

Um, Cassandra, you wanna plan that playdate we've been talking about forever? 

**********

Planning all the details of Meg's visit, dealing with the devil in those same details, fighting yet another round of the barfs, getting myself back on track physically and emotionally (more to come in the Emotional Fat series.  It never ceases to surprise me that this is a battle I'll be waging the rest of my life!), Gaby having two back-to-back competitions in the last two weeks, and trying to get the house ready for My daughter and gra...gran...the spawn of my spawn (People, cut me some slack!  Do I even look like I am old enough to have a granddaughter? Yes I am vain! ), I've had no time to write.  Not only that, but I sort of look at the blog like something yummy that I can't have until I get everything else done.  I feel really guilty if I sit down to write (and that includes two book outlines and a couple of freelance projects that aren't due until April!) if there's anything else that is not taken care of around the house.  

It's a sickness I tell you!

I'll be back out here Thursday (maybe before if I can manage to make the house look like hoarders haven't taken over! Whoever said, "Having a tiny house is so much easier to keep tidy!" was a lying liar who lies!) with loads of pictures of the most adorable grandspawn you've ever seen!    Until then, here's a cute picture of my very own little spawn, holding the 2nd place trophy that her team won at one of the recent competitions.   Poor Gaby still isn't used to that make-up and is always looking under her eyelids!  

 

By the way, Gaby has asked me to tell all of my blog readers, all three of you, that all she wants for Valentine's Day is her two front teeth . . . and the missing one on the bottom!   I'm assuming she'll take her teeth in place of all that chocolate she was looking forward to.  Or not.

SOPA/PIPA - AKA How to Kill the Internet While Embracing Censorship

 

 

SOPA/PIPA are bad.  That's what you need to know right off the bat.  Very bad.  

I can direct you to about a hundred websites telling you what SOPA and PIPA are and how horrible they are.   I can also direct you to a government site that tells you who the assholes in Congress and the Senate are, that are sponsoring and supporting this bill as well as those opposing it.   The fact of the matter is, a lot of those sites are going black, either as of midnight tonight, or 8AM tomorrow morning.  Barking Mad will be among those going black in opposition of SOPA/PIPA.  

Originally I had password protected the blog, but I found a plug-in for TypePad that was a lot more to my liking.  If the plug-in fails, the blog will be password protected from 8AM Wednesday the 18th of January until 12AM January the 19th.  

 

 

My Little Pill Problem

 

 

I'm sort-of picking up where I left off in my last post, my update on my weight loss.   I didn't want to shove this in with the rest because it wasn't germane to the topic.  

 Anyhow, here goes!

At my office visit back on Friday the 13th, in addition to the normal stuff like weight and blood pressure (it's still borderline high) my doctor ran some blood tests and I found out I'm seriously anemic, as well as being deficient in potassium and magnesium.   I'm working on getting back on track with healthy eating so that I can correct those deficiencies, but I'd be lying if I told you that I was shocked to find out that I'm "seriously anemic."

Anemia is something I've dealt with for a very long time.   I've been told to take iron supplements for the last 20+ years.  I always hesitate because I've read how constipating they can be, and if there's one thing I've never been, it's constipated.   Even when I have upped my consumption of foods that are naturally high in iron and taken a supplement, I still end up anemic.   We don't eat a lot of red meat; once a week would be considered "a lot" for our family.  It's more likely that we eat red meat perhaps once a month!  I've upped my intake of fresh spinach (don't even think about asking me to eat the cooked stuff!  I can't stand it!), and I'm including other vegetables in my diet that are naturally high in iron.  Apparently it's not been enough.  

One thing I have never been aware of until now, and now I'm acutely aware of it, are the consequences of being "seriously anemic."     Rapid heart rate (ding ding ding!), shortness of breath (ding ding ding) and extreme fatigue are all symptoms of being anemic.   Once my doctor explained this, the bigger parts of a huge puzzle I've been dealing with for the last six months or so, started to fall into place.   

I have been plagued with almost paralyzing fatigue since the middle of the summer.  At first I chalked it up to the move from the house on the lake to our current home, and then my diet, then I thought it was a symptom of my depression worsening - but I didn't feel more depressed, just insanely tired all of the time.   When we first joined the Y, instead of feeling an overall sense of more energy despite the muscle pain, I was just tired.  All time time.  I have been sleeping close 16 hours a day at this point.   I'd wake up, get Gaby ready for school, walk her to the bus stop, walk around the block a couple of times, come back home and sleep until noon, or sometimes until 2pm.   I just could not seem to get enough sleep.

In an effort to try and get more sleep earlier in the evening, I started taking two Xanax before bed along with my anti-depressant.   Before I knew about the problems being anemic could cause, I chalked everything up to not getting enough "good" sleep at night.  Increasing the Xanax just made everything worse.   Now that I know what the problem is, I'm trying to wean myself off of the Xanax, and to put it in the simplest terms possible, it's hell.    One Xanax is usually enough to make me pretty drowsy, but I wanted to get myself to a deep sleep and stay that way.  So if one is good, I reasoned that two must be better.    Well, I never claimed to be a genius.  My prescription is for a maximum of three per day.   So I wasn't going over that, but I wasn't doing myself any favors either by taking two at bedtime. 

So, now I'm taking Melatonin again at bedtime and dealing with the massive anxiety attacks I'm having on a daily basis while trying to get off of the Xanax altogether.     I'm not sure I can do it though.  I'm only leaving the house when I absolutely have to because I have been having panic attacks (Sitting through Gaby's most recent cheer competition this past Sunday was sheer hell!  I don't even take her to tumbling classes any more because of the stress that the fear of the social interactions causes me.) and nothing I'm doing to try and deal with the anxiety in a natural way, seems to be helping.  Hence the reason I haven't been at the Y since becoming really sick.

Xanax has been a daily "Mother's little helper" in my life for the last year.  Between that tiny white pill and my once daily Lexapro, I can get a handle on things and I'm better able to deal with the pressure that social situations place me under.  Right now though?   I kind of want to retreat into my hidey hole again.   I don't socialize unless someone comes to me and initiates conversation.  I don't return phone calls or emails.  And I'm beginning to obsess over what everyone thinks about the "outer" me.  

It's weird though because I'm not despondent nor am I worried about not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  I'm not having any really dark thoughts at this point.  It's not the blackness this time.  What it is, is the overwhelming anxiety.   If I don't get it under control, it's going to lead me back down the path I don't want to travel again, under any circumstances.

For the most part I'm happy.  I have to work at it, but overall, I'm happy.  However, I can start to feel the tiny spider-leg like cracks that the anxiety causes, start to chip away at that happiness.   I'm not sure I can manage without the Xanax.   I used to think I couldn't live without Coca Cola and that if I didn't start my day with a glass of frosty cold, sugary goodness, I'd feel like crap.   Obviously, I'm doing just fine without that stuff in my system.   

But...

I don't know if I can do the same with the Xanax.   I'm starting to worry that all these little hairline cracks are going to end up shattering me completely if I don't get the anxiety under control.  And, I don't know if I can handle admitting that I might have a problem with prescription pills.   This is the one thing I've never wanted to happen - to be so completely reliant on a medication that I have horrible issues when trying to get off of it.